Nankasi Melda's family - Funded

Nankasi Melda's family is from the village of Byerima where Sr. Maria grew up. Nankasi is married, and she and her husband Ssentoogo Gonzaga have seven children who live at home with them. Their daughter's names are Nandyowa Proscovia and Nantayi Sharon, who are fifteen and six years old respectively. They also have five sons Ssenyonjo Pascal, Zziwa Fred, Mayega Godfrey, Muyanja Ronald and Kamala Emmanuel who are thirteen, eleven, eight, six and two respectively. Nankasi and Ssentoogo's also lost two of their young children when they were not able to pay the hospital fees in order to save their lives.

My name is Nankasi Imelda. About sixteen years ago, I got married to Mr. Sentoogo. Both of us were teenagers and had dropped out of school due to lack of tuition. Getting married at that young age was not my priority but since I had nothing to do, my parents suggested that I get married.

Having children is considered as a blessing and we have been blessed with seven children. However, there are many challenges we are facing as a result of having these children. One of the challenges is that we have not been able to provide our children with good education, meals, and other basic needs of life. The other challenge we have faced is that we lost two of our children when they were young since we did not have enough money to take them to a hospital. Our hospitals work differently. When you take a patient to a hospital the nurses and doctors will not give them treatment until you have paid the fee. I still mourn the death of my children.

We are very excited about this new project. My hope is that I will generate some money to pay for the tuition of my children and to provide them with better nutrition. Since we are peasant farmers, we have been using the small piece of land to grow the food we eat and as of now we cannot get enough food since it is depleted. I hope that we can use the pig dung to fertilize the land and this will allow us to get more food for the family.